1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the transfer of funds. More particularly, the present invention relates to an on-line payments facility.
2. Description of Related Art
There are currently several problems that make it difficult for individuals or small businesses to send money to or receive money from groups of individuals or businesses using an on-line interface to one or more payment systems. Prior art solutions tend to be too complex or too simple. Complex solutions require a detailed understanding of the underlying characteristics of individual payment systems for even minimal use. In addition, they fail to provide automatic response to exception conditions such as refused or returned payments.
Simple solutions allow for only a single payment to be made at a time, restrict the system to a single user per customer, have insufficient controls over release of payments, or fail to provide for explanatory information to accompany the payment.
It would be advantageous to provide a payment interface that was both simple and powerful; the automated the enrollment process; that supported multiple users per customer, with proper roles and financial controls; that hid the details of underlying payment systems and automatically routed payments to the appropriate system; that allowed the user to create, save, and schedule groups of payments, where those groups would be independent of grouping capabilities of underlying payment systems; that provided notification of important events to users and payment recipients; and that could automatically process and take proper action when it encountered exception conditions.